StarShip Down

by Darrell Bain

  For the rest of the meeting Travis kept the officers focused on matters of mundane but needful interest such as supplies, estimated time until a livable planet might be found, reorganization of the line of command to insert the army into it, how to begin a crash training program for passengers and crew in farming techniques, selection of personnel for the first landing and exploration parties, how to word the forthcoming announcement of change in command and that the ship was lost, with no hope of ever going home.

  Grindstaff excused himself as soon as the meeting ended with the admonition that, “I need to scatter a little oil on the water before the rumors amongst the troops get too wild.”

  “Yes, and I've got to do the same thing.” Travis thanked him once again and shook his hand before he left. It was a very sincere handshake. He also thanked each of the others personally for supporting him and for their contributions to the discussion. All in all he thought he had handled things well enough, other than not anticipating Havers’ attempted usurpation of power.

  * * * *

  “...have been integrated into the ship's crew and into the line of command. Until further notice, the duties of the security department will be assumed by some members of the army company we have onboard. They will be under the command of Major William Grindstaff. I expect him to carry out his new duties in a calm and professional manner as long as necessary and I urge both crew and passengers to give him and his men your full cooperation.

  “The astrogater tells me that we should arrive at a nearby star cluster within the month and at that time we shall begin searching for a home, a planet compatible with human life in all aspects, for we have no hope of rescue. I am sorry to be the bearer of such news but we must all face reality. I hope and pray that we will establish a new colony our descendents can be proud of, one that will flourish under the same rule of law as the nations of our Confederacy on earth.

  “It will not be easy but our forebears were pioneers, our contemporaries on all our colony worlds are pioneers and now we shall be pioneers, too. I feel confident that you will all meet the challenges ahead in an exemplary manner. In the days to come, Mister Masters of the logistics department will furnish a list of items that will be rationed. Pay strict attention to it. Our success or failure may depend on the way we use such goods and supplies as we have on hand now.

  “In days to come the ship's company will have to be reorganized as a colony ship rather than a service liner. This may entail changes in duty stations, work assignments and greater or lesser responsibility for particular tasks than what's gone before. All personnel aboard this ship will be integrated into the crew as soon as possible, just as the army company has been. We must all work together and that is the best way to accomplish it. I will be meeting with groups of you in days to come.

  “Several emergency training programs will also be organized as quickly as possible. Some changes will be temporary, others permanent, but whatever the case, accept them in good faith as necessary. Once we have found a planet that can be safely colonized and are secure on it, every person in this ship will have a part in making it a safe home for ourselves and organizing a government suitable to our needs. Note that I said once we are secure. I can't predict how long that might take but hopefully it will be short. In any case, elections for such government as we desire and need will be held as soon as practically possible after landing and securing an area where we can live and grow crops.

  “For now I thank you for your forbearance as we go about our duties. Listen to and obey your superiors and perform your own duties to the best of your ability. We will succeed. Thank you.”

  Travis held his unsmiling position for long enough to be certain that the all-ship com was no longer live then visibly relaxed. He had decided to give his speech from the control room as a way to signify the change in command and as a symbol of his authority over the Carlsbad.

  “Very good, Captain,” Brandon said. He touched his forehead with the tips of his fingers in an informal salute even though that mark of respect had gone out of style in the COESS Lines.

  “I agree,” Sissy said to him with a grin that was explained with her next remark. “It was just right but you need to have someone make you some new insignia for your uniform.”

  “Whoops! Never thought about it. Who knows how to sew, I wonder?”

  “I'll do it for you.”

  “Thank you,” Travis said solemnly. He didn't dare let it out that he had been carrying around a captain's insignia for years as a reminder of his goal to attain that position.

  * * * *

  “Man alive, what have we got ourselves into?” Tom said to his twin, a purely rhetorical question.

  “We've got ourselves into guard duty tonight is what,” Jerry said. “Whoever would have thought we'd be taking over the ship?” He examined himself in the mirror of the duty room to be sure his uniform was immaculate. He had no desire for a chewing out and extra duty from Sergeant Wong.

  “We haven't taken it over, Doofus. We're just the police force and the landing party and we're the ones carrying the spears while the civilians get to play like farmers.”

  “Sounds like we're in charge to me.”

  “Captain Callahan is in charge, PFC Smith,” Platoon Sergeant Wong said as she appeared, apparently from thin air. “As of now, we are directly under his command. And in the meantime, I have the perfect detail for you two.”

  “What is it, Sergeant?” they asked in unison.

  “Major Grindstaff, First Sergeant Gomez and I have decided that your background makes you candidates for the class in farming. Report to the main conference room on deck two first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Whom do we report to?” Tom asked.

  “To Weapons Tech Sandra Johnson, believe it or not. She's the class coordinator but she'll be studying just like you two will. And if I hear about any grabass in class, you will be two very sorry young PFCs. Clear?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” they chorused. As soon as the sergeant turned her back, a pair of beatific smiles crossed their faces but they waited until she was well out of sight before speaking.

  “Talk about luck!” Jerry said, forgetting all about holding spears and thinking of holding Sandy instead.

  “Don't forget; it's my turn.”

  “I won't. Say, farming may not be so bad. We wouldn't be in the army then, would we? I mean we're going to be a colony. Will we need an army then?”

  “Hell if I know, but there's one another good thing about it, I think.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Don't farmers need to have wives?” Tom said with a wily grin. “Somebody to have the stove warm when you come in from the fields?”

  “Sure, but don't think small. How about a warm stove and a warm bed, too?”

  * * * *

  Crag Morehill stared at his plate in disgust. So the rationing had started already. That made the rumors sweeping the ship, even into convict quarters, seem reasonable. And almost certainly true, according to what the new captain had said. His speech had even been piped into the convict quarters. The ship was lost and he said there was no finding the way back. They were on a course now to find a world to colonize. But what will that mean for me and the other cons? he wondered. Would they keep us locked up indefinitely? He thought about it for a while and a crooked smile slowly broke the planes of his face. It caused the scar that crossed his lips to the left of his nose to crinkle his face into a gargoyle's mask. No, he doubted they would all be kept in cells, not forever. They wouldn't have the manpower or the inclination for that. Well, for hard cases like him they might. But suppose he promised to work? Not that he would have had a choice had he been deposited in the swamps of Brongstill but the situation now cast a different light on his circumstances and that of his fellow cons.

  Nah, he decided. Some of ‘em may be let loose but they'll have to keep me. For a while anyway. But give me a chance and we'll see what happens. If it's a halfway decent world ... and if someone forgets to guar
d their weapon ... and then there are the women to think about. There were plenty of them on the ship, even some of the guards. And wouldn't he like to get his hands on a couple of those? One in particular appealed to him as a possible dupe, the big blond bitch he'd been cultivating. So far she hadn't been all that receptive since there wasn't much they could have done about it anyway, but what about now? A big man, one who was tough and strong and knew how to handle himself might be just what she would go for on a brand new world, one where all kinds of danger might lurk. Yeah, that was the way to go. He chuckled in the confines of his cell. She wasn't much to look at but then all he had to do was look in a mirror to see he that he had come out on the low end of that department himself. And what the hell, he sure had nothing to lose!

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  * * *

  Chapter Five

  “Remember the conversation we had the morning after the balloon went up?” Travis said to Sissy as they were dining together in a secluded corner of the officer's mess.

  “Uh huh.” She gazed at him from beneath lowered lids.

  “I think we'd better put that idea on hold until we find us a place to live.”

  “You mean the idea of us possibly getting together?”

  He nodded resignedly. How can something I wanted so much turn out so badly? he thought. I'm a captain but my ship is lost. I think I may have found a woman I could fall in love with but she's in the line of command. Off limits, damn it.

  “I've been wondering when you'd mention it. And much as I hate to say it, I have to admit you're right. The captain can't be seen playing favorites, especially with the situation we're in.”

  “Unfortunately. And I really mean it, Sissy. Do you think you can wait until we've grounded and have the colony organized into a governing unit?” His eyes pleaded with her to say yes.

  She shrugged. “Depends on how long that takes, doesn't it?”

  “I suppose,” he admitted reluctantly.

  “No supposing about it. I haven't talked at length to such scientists as we have aboard, but I suspect manufacturing the various drugs we use for life extension isn't going to be easy, if it's possible at all. Besides ... I think there's going to be a lot of permanent pairing off as it sinks in that we're no longer a service liner but a colony ship.”

  “True, and actually, that's good. Not for us at the moment but for the ship as a whole.”

  She laughed, a low mirthless chuckle. “You have a command mentality, Travis. If this hadn't happened, you'd eventually have graduated to captain of one of the big passenger liners or a survey ship.”

  “Not as long as Gordon was doing my evaluations.”

  She shook her head. “I don't think he would have lasted much longer. Seeing what happened when we faced a crisis makes me wonder how he stayed stable as long as he did. You'd have made captain before long despite him.”

  “Yeah, I probably would have.” He sighed as he admitted she was right. But damn it, being captain wasn't all peaches and cream. In fact so far he'd seen very little advantage to it other than an inner satisfaction of knowing he'd done his duty as well as he could and as he should have. He had always been his own worst critic, driving himself to perform whatever he was called on to do better than the next man or woman. It made for an isolated and lonely life on occasion but he had hoped the growing rapprochement between he and Sissy before the crisis would turn into something permanent, even while he was ending his involvement with Cathy.

  “We took some more sights right before I came down,” Sissy said, more to change the subject than anything.

  “And?”

  “We're getting close enough to pick out promising star systems but not near enough to take spectrographic readings of planets yet, not for any world we could live on. We'll be in range soon, though.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Two weeks, max and we should start getting some hits. I want to shut down then long enough to set up a course taking us by what might be decent planets. We can stop at the first one showing a breathable atmosphere and suitable gravity. If it's no good, we can go on from there.”

  “Stay on it. That's the most important job in the ship right now.”

  “Don't I know it! And for more reasons than one.” She winked at him and pushed her chair back from the table. Just as she was walking away a woman with short black hair in a COESS uniform brushed past her without speaking.

  Travis saw her approaching and stood up. Cathy!

  “So, you can't see me but you have time for your precious astrogater, do you? What else is she good for besides getting us lost?”

  His face flamed. He couldn't help it but he didn't intend to let it go any further, not there. “Cathy, I won't speak to you like this in public. I'm leaving. If you want to talk to me, make an appointment.” He walked away, leaving her sputtering. Ahead of him he could see Sissy nearing the exit. He followed her out, staring at her departing form until she was out of sight while cursing the circumstances keeping them apart.

  * * * *

  “You're late, Jimmy.” She had let herself into his stateroom with the code he'd given her the last time they'd been together and had been waiting on him.

  He hugged Maria Mirando tightly, feeling a surge of passion rush through his body. “Sorry, sweetheart. Captain Callahan is pushing us pretty hard.”

  “Is he gonna turn into a martinet?” she said as she kicked the door closed behind him. “Never mind, kiss me first and then talk.”

  He did so, enthusiastically. He wasn't exactly inexperienced but two years at the academy after college had left him little time for mixing with the opposite sex and he hadn't been much of a ladies’ man beforehand. He found himself hoping the liaison with Maria would turn into something permanent.

  “Whew! That's better, Jimmy. Now you can talk, but let's sit down, first.” The way her knees felt, she thought it was a fine idea. He let her take his hand in both of hers while he talked.

  “The captain is really nice to work for when you get right down to it.” he said. “He's always willing to listen to the rest of us. Not like Gordon. He thought he was God and the rest of us not worth pissing on.”

  Maria laughed heartedly. “That description could very well fit a number of officers or NCOs I've run into over the years.

  “So how come you're late?”

  “Oh, that. It's just that so many changes are going on that the captain can't always be in the control room, and with Gordon out of it, we're already short a watch officer.”

  “What kind of changes, Jimmy?”

  “You should know. He's having to reorganize the whole ship. Haven't you noticed, what with the army inserted into the crew?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I couldn't help but notice. Some of us are training for the landing and exploration parties and others of us have taken over security and police duties. That's the part I don't like. We aren't really trained for it. Fortunately, we haven't had much to do. The passengers have been pretty well behaved and the reeducation department he's gotten started is keeping them busy. But y'know, a lot of them still don't believe we won't be rescued or suddenly find a way to get back home. Isn't that crazy?”

  He shrugged. “There are always gonna be that kind, Maria. So long as they pull their share of the load, who cares? How's it going with the convicts? Are they causing any problems?”

  Her smile vanished. “No, not yet, but that is a big pile of shit we're going to fall into if it's not worked out real careful. There are some awful bad cases amongst them from what I've seen. It makes me kind of wish for the death penalty again.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh huh. I've got part of the detail since we took it away from security and I've looked over some of the case files. I sure hope Captain Callahan has a plan for what to do with them once we land.”

  “We could keep them locked up, I guess.”

  “There's too many and it would tie up too much of our manpower. We're going to need every swingin
g tit to make a colony work. You know as well as I do a liner isn't geared for starting a colony.”

  “You're saying we ought to free them?”

  “Jimmy, I just don't know. Maybe it would work out okay with some of them but others? I wouldn't sleep a wink with them loose.”

  He freed his hand and slid it around her shoulder. “Let's talk about something else.”

  She leaned forward and kissed him then did it again for good measure. “I'm willing.”

  “I can see that. Hell with it. Let's talk later.”

  Maria smiled and slid her finger down the closure of her blouse. It parted, revealing a very flimsy translucent bra. She touched it with a finger.

  “You can do the rest.”

  Jimmy fumbled some but accomplished the task to her satisfaction. A few moments later they were clasped together in his bed and she was introducing him to a few sexual endeavors she thought he'd had no prior experience with. By the time they were finished, he was thoroughly satiated and much more ready to talk, she thought with a sigh of pleasure. It had been a while since she'd gotten this close to a man.

  “Do you think the captain will keep the army unit intact after we land?” she asked. It was a subject of intense interest among her comrades but so far there had been no official word, only rumors.

  “I don't know for sure, love. Remember, I'm only a junior officer. This is my first cruise. Unless it concerns something directly pertaining to the ship, I'm as out of the loop as you.”

  “Come on, Jimmy. You're bound to have caught a few hints.”

  “Well ... the army has already been integrated into the ship's crew although as I understand it, the unit integrity has remained as it was. Is that right?”

  “Pretty much so.. Essentially, Major Grindstaff has become a ship's department head and the troops under him are serving as a police force, among other things like planning for the first landing. But he has some of us attending classes, too. According to what I've heard, we won't keep more than a platoon active.”